Father stabs his two daughters to death after luring them into the house with mangoes

A father stabbed his two daughters to death yesterday by luring them into the house with mangoes.

Mr James Maina, 30, met his daughters playing outside their home in Mishomoroni, Mombasa county, Kenya, while their mother wasn’t around and he asked them to come in and eat mangoes.

The girls, aged six and four, followed their father into their one-room home and he grabbed a knife and stabbed them. One was stabbed in the chest and the other had her neck slashed.

Rather than call for help, the father, who was reportedly drunk at the time, sat on a keg near where his bleeding daughters lay.

It wasn’t until a neighbour named Ms Lina Righa, who feeds the girls in the absence of their mother, called for them for lunch and they didn’t respond, that it was discovered something was amiss. Ms Lina sent her child to check on them but the child returned to tell her that the door was locked.

She narrated:

The children usually eat lunch at my house when their mother is not around but when I called them, neither responded. I sent my child to look for them. She told me their door was locked.

As Ms Righa prepared to go and find out where the children were, their mother, a businesswoman, returned home.

Ms Lina Righa

Ms Lina continued:

I went with her and knocked on the door. The children’s father did not respond, so we broke down the door. We found him sitting on a jerrican. He said he had killed the children.

Ms Righa, who is the couple’s landlady, said Mr Maina had spent the whole day indoors drinking.

The couple has been living here for four months and the woman has been having problems because of her husband’s drinking. She is the one who has been struggling to feed the family.

Mr Maina’s father, Mr Charles Kimani, acknowledged that his son has had a drinking problem for years, adding that it has been causing problems in his eight-year marriage.

Mombasa Police Commander Johnston Ipara said that Mr Maina was arrested and is being held at the Nyali Police Station.